Crystal ball of energy

From CrawlWiki
Revision as of 13:48, 3 June 2016 by Bwijn (talk | contribs) (updated to 0.18, not changed)
Jump to: navigation, search
Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Crystal ball" redirects here. For the obsolete items, see crystal ball of fixation or crystal ball of seeing.

Type Miscellaneous item
Name crystal ball of energy
Icon Crystal ball of energy.png
A magical device which can be used to restore one's reserves of magical energy, but the use of which carries the risk of draining all of those energies completely. This risk varies inversely with the proportion of their maximum energy which the user possesses; a user near his or her full potential will find this item most beneficial.

A crystal ball of energy is an evocable item which, when used successfully, restores a large amount of your MP (5 + 1dEvocations). It has no cost to use, but does have a high failure rate and may cause Divinations miscast effects when used incorrectly. This can result in confusion, loss of MP, and/or 1-5 points of temporary intelligence damage.

The odds of success increase with both your Evocations skill and the percentage of your max MP you still have. Regardless of your Evocations, trying to use this item when nearly out of MP is almost guaranteed to fail, and attempting it while confused will always fail. However, the higher your Evocations, the greater the amount of MP you can spend before using this item becomes unlikely to pay off. See the table below for details:

Evocations Min. MP% for
max. success rate
Max. success rate MP restored (average)
2 72% 8% 6
5 66% 61% 7.5
10 56% 78% 10
15 46% 84% 12.5
20 36% 87% 15
25 26% 89% 17.5

Strategy

With Evocations training, the crystal ball of energy is the most powerful MP restoration item in the game, outperforming even a potion of magic. However, the results of failure are potentially catastrophic, and even at maximum Evocations there is always a significant failure rate. Pay close attention to your current MP if you're considering using this, and have escape methods lined up that don't rely on MP. Use clarity to negate the possible confusion effects; a ring of sustain abilities can cut the temporary Int loss in half. Zin's vitalisation prevents both confusion and int loss, but does not prevent the mp drain. Consider having a staff of energy regain mp for the next try if you were drained by this item.